The conventional wisdom is that boys and men read science fiction, girls and women read romance.

As Jane Austin famously said, “I write about love and money. What else is there?” I’m sure a lot of girls and women want only to read about love and money. Indeed, romance books account for 60 percent of the fiction market. Science fiction, fantasy, mystery, thrillers, and literary fiction scramble around for pieces of the rest of that pie.

But there is something else. There are ideas and speculations, inner space and outer space, the future and the past, artificial intelligence and technology. Aren’t girls and women interested in reading about those things, too?